I am a 50% faculty member in Department of Religious Studies and 50% in Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies.

I am a cultural anthropologist interested in the intertwined processes of religiosity, secularization, and state operations in modernity, post-colonial, and Communist conditions. Areas of research and teaching: Chinese religions & secularization; critical theory; China Studies, sovereignty and state power; gender and feminism; media studies; cultural approaches to political economy.

I specialize in the study of China, with an interest in Sinophone cultures of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia and the West. Although my research is based on fieldwork in contemporary China and Taiwan, it is always informed by a vision of the longue durée of Chinese history, and I seek to reconcile Western critical theory with Chinese philosophy and Chinese empirical findings.

I have assumed teaching, research, and visiting scholar positions at the University of Michigan, University of Chicago, Beijing University, Academia Sinica in Taiwan, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard University. I was Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia 2007-09.

Research:

With a five-year National Science Foundation research grant, I have conducted fieldwork in rural Wenzhou, China since 1991 on the revival of popular religion and their negotiations with state secularization.

杨美惠教授长期致力于中国研究的理论化，从1980年代开始多次到中国从事调查研究，其著述以对中国社会人情往来的”礼物”的”关系学”探讨而著称。其 代表性著作Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: the Art of Social Relationships in China 现已在台北翻译出版，该书简体中文版《礼物，关系学与国家：中国人际关系与主体性建构》，2009年由江苏人民出版社出版。此外，她在国际重要学术杂志上发表论著，其中包括”横跨台湾海峡的女神妈祖：国家，进香，和卫星电视”、”关系的力量”和”传统，旅行的人类学，与中国的现代性话语”等数篇中文论文，并曾主编学术文集Spaces of Their Own: Women’s Public Sphere in Transnational China（1999）。其新作《中国人的宗教感：现代性的痛苦与国家构建》（Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation，2008），将更集中地呈现她对中国民间社会的一贯关注和近些年来的思考。

“Mass Media and Transnational Subjectivity in Shanghai: Notes on (Re)cosmopolitanism in a Chinese Metropolis” in The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader. Jonathan Inda and Renato Rosaldo, eds. Oxford: Blackwell (2002). Electronic Version Here

“Through Chinese Women’s Eyes” (1997) 50-minute documentary comparing Chinese urban women’s lives during the era of state feminism and gender erasure during the Maoist era, with the current era of commercialization, featuring gender difference, commodification of sexuality, and globalization. Film includes clips of Cultural Revolution and “revolutionary model operas”, as well as interviews with urban workers, intellectuals, and social workers in Shanghai and Beijing. (distributed by Women Make Movies: info@wmm.com and screened at the Creteil Women’s International Film Festival in Paris, France).Video Clip 1Video Clip 2To order this film, click here: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c414.shtml

(To order this film, please contact the filmmaker, Mayfair Yang, directly at: yangm@religion.ucsb.edu. Only DVD’s available to institutions for $65.00 (+ $5 shipping) and for private individuals for $25.00 (+ $5 shipping). No rentals.